Tag: isis panopticon reissue

After last year’s reissue of their debut album, Celestial, the attention has been turned to ISIS’s third full-length release, Panopticon – which has been remastered and comes complete with new artwork in a 12-page booklet – due for an April 28th release in the UK/Europe on Ipecac. This is a top opportunity to revisit (or indeed, discover) an album which showcases the legendary band at their most confident. Ground-breaking in both interpretations of the word, you would be hard-pushed to find a stronger, more impactful record released in the first five years of the millennium than Panopticon.

About the reissue, Aaron Harris comments, “I got the check disk from the manufacturer the other day and listened to Panopticon all the way through to make sure things were good to go. It was like taking a journey back in time. When ISIS was playing these songs regularly I wasn’t able to enjoy them as a listener. Now that I haven’t played these songs in years they’ve taken on a whole new identity for me. Mika Jussila did an amazing job with the remaster. The record has more detail and dynamics now. I feel that remasters sometime ruin the integrity of records, but I feel that fans will really appreciate this remaster, and maybe find a new appreciation for Panopticon, as I have.”

Aaron Turner continues…”After some years away from the material Panopticon now feels like the most optimistic of all the ISIS albums, dark as the subject mater may be. Giving voice to my concerns about the loss of privacy and the deterioration of personal freedom through the lyrics on the album made those subjects weigh less heavily on my mind. Something about the sound of the songs feels open and bright to me as well – post-millennial depression and pre-apocalyptic paranoia hadn’t yet taken hold I suppose. Panopticon also feels like a turning point to me in the trajectory of ISIS, and serves as a personal place-marker for me in terms of how the world of music and music consumption was shifting radically around that time. Things have certainly become cloudier since then and more uncertain – in that way the subject matter of Panopticon also now seems a bit premonitory.”